


through the iron gates of life

by Penknife



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Some People Live/Not Everybody Dies, Anger, Eventual Sex, Everyone Has Issues, Grief/Mourning, Injury Recovery, Multi, Post-Rogue One, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-14 00:07:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18041660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penknife/pseuds/Penknife
Summary: They're all trying to put themselves back together after Scarif. (That might be easier if they stopped trying to take each other apart.)





	through the iron gates of life

By the time Bodhi gets Cassian and Jyn back to the Yavin base, everyone has already concluded that they’re dead, so there is a great deal of excitement and confusion. It’s a relief when a flight officer tells everyone crowding the transport to go away and orders them all sent to the medical bay. Cassian responds to questions in tight monosyllables and admits that he can’t feel his feet, which gets him strapped to a stretcher and extracted from the transport with extreme care.

Jyn holds onto Cassian and tells him fiercely that it will be all right until the medical droids submerge him in the bacta tank. After that she collapses into the nearest chair. There isn’t another chair, and it seems like too much trouble to go find one, so Bodhi slides down to sit on the floor, his back to the wall. He’s fairly certain that he’s glad to not be dead. That’s the one certainty he’s got right now, so he’s hanging onto it.

Eventually he becomes aware that Jyn is shivering. She’s sitting curled up in the chair with her arms around her knees. Probably someone will come and examine them, later, and possibly those people will think to bring blankets with them, but that seems too far in the future to rely on right now. “Come here?” he says, holding up his hand to her.

He’s not sure whether she’ll understand what he’s suggesting, and he can’t assemble more words to explain, but after a moment she climbs down to the floor and sits between his knees. He worries for a moment that she will think he means something sexual, when there’s nothing farther from his mind right now. She leans back against him and lets him wrap his arms around her waist, pure animal comfort between comrades in arms. He rests his chin on her shoulder and closes his eyes.

After a while, medical droids insist that they get up and have their own wounds treated, and bring them sugary drinks which are probably laced with nutrients, which Bodhi dutifully drinks and Jyn throws away untouched. Bodhi stays until they are about to take Cassian out of the tank. He makes the mistake of watching as Cassian begins to struggle against the mask and the tangle of tubes, and all at once he’s wrapped in tentacles, choking on sourness with something slithering wet inside his mind—

He doubles over retching, and Jyn turns in alarm, clearly torn about who to hover over in protective anger. He straightens and wipes his mouth and shakes his head. “You should stay with Cassian,” he says, and he walks outside and leans against the wall and puts his hands over his face and breathes into them for a while until he doesn’t feel like he needs to anymore. 

Eventually Jyn comes out to him. He nods, intending that to convey that if he isn’t all right, he is dealing with the level of not all right that he currently is. “How is he?”

“He can feel his feet,” Jyn says.

“That has to be good,” Bodhi says. “How is he?”

Jyn shrugs, unsmiling. She has probably just told Cassian that they’re the only survivors of the mission. That can’t have been much fun for her. 

“They must have a canteen around here somewhere? Food?” he says.

Jyn looks at him as if he’s speaking an alien language. “Probably.”

“That’s probably what happens next, right? We eat, and then they find us quarters and duties, because we’re joining the Alliance, so we need somewhere to stay, and some kind of job.” 

“I’m not sure how this works,” Jyn says cautiously.

“That seems reasonable, though, doesn’t it?”

There is a canteen, serving food that’s familiar because it’s Imperial ration packs, probably stolen, or maybe surplus. He prods Jyn to eat until she starts to get color back into her face, and then watches her wolf down the rest of her food as if hunger has suddenly become real to her. He eats more cautiously, and then looks for someone to ask about quarters.

The officer he finds considers them both with a frown that isn’t actually unkind. “You’re a pilot, right? You’ll bunk with your squadron, when you have one, but you’ll have to check out on the simulators first, and I’m not going to test you right now, you look half dead." He shakes his head at Jyn. "And I don’t know what we’re going to do with you.”

“Just give us somewhere to sleep,” Jyn says. “We can share.”

The man shrugs, looking suddenly tired. “We have room right now. I’ll assign you something.”

They wind up in a tiny room with bedrolls to spread out on the floor. It’s not any more uncomfortable than the bunks on a lot of Imperial ships. Jyn gets her back to one corner of the room where she can watch the door. Bodhi lies down where she can watch him, too, although he thinks that if she didn’t trust him, she wouldn’t have offered to share.

He wakes up gasping for breath, thrashing against something that’s constricting him, choking him. The awareness that it’s his own bedding penetrates eventually, and sometime after that the awareness that Jyn is on her knees beside him, saying something that registers purely as sound for a while before it resolves into words.

“You’re all right, we’re all right, it’s over.” He nods to show that he understands, but can’t find any words. There are torn and bloody places in his mind where “making sense” should be. Jyn’s breath is hot against his ear, and he is here, not still there, but part of him is still there, writhing in Bor Gullet’s grip, some part he’s starting to be afraid will be there forever.

He touches her to show that he is mostly back from that place, as far back as he can manage to get right now. He still can’t speak, but she doesn’t ask him questions, just lies down close enough to him that he can hear her breathing. They sleep like that, and if he has more nightmares, he doesn’t remember them. He wakes up once to see Jyn with her eyes closed and her face wet, her breathing not quite even, and he closes his own eyes so she won’t know he saw her crying.

*****

The morning of the assault on the Death Star, Bodhi passes the first three simulator tests for bomber combat and fails the fourth spectacularly, freezing under enemy fire and taking two other Y-wings out with him when his ship spins out and then explodes.

He pushes himself back from the controls, his hands shaking. Biggs Darklighter, the pilot who’s been testing him, gives him a sympathetic thump on the shoulder as he climbs out of the simulator.

“I think you know they’re not going to clear you for a bomber today,” Biggs says. “But you’re obviously a good pilot, and we can use you on a transport until you’re ready to try this again. You had a couple of hard missions, give yourself time to come back from that.”

He spent his time in the Navy as a transport pilot, not in combat, but this is something he should be able to do. “What if there isn’t time?”

“Don’t worry,” Biggs says. “We’ll take care of the Death Star.”

They take care of the Death Star, but most of the pilots don’t come back. There is a victory party anyway, because they aren’t all dead, which Cassian insists on attending on crutches. A lot of people want to congratulate the three of them for making this possible, which Jyn seems to find gratifying and Cassian seems to find unbearable.

There is a lot of alcohol being passed around, and Bodhi takes a bottle of something strong and brings it over to where Cassian is sitting with his crutches propped against his chair, looking like he hates everything about this party. Jyn is in the middle of a knot of people, and seems to want to be there, so he doesn’t try to collect her on the way.

“You should get drunk,” he says, offering Cassian the bottle. 

Cassian looks at Bodhi like he’s not sure which side he’s on. “I should?”

“That’s how we handle things in the Navy. I’m not sure how they handle them in the Alliance.”

“I think you have your ‘they’ and ‘we’ reversed,” Cassian says.

“You’re right. I forget. You look like your back is killing you.”

“It’s fine,” Cassian says, so sharply that Bodhi is sure it’s not fine. He takes the bottle from Bodhi’s hand and takes a long drink. 

“I was going to say you could argue that’s medicinal.”

“I don’t need excuses for my vices,” Cassian says. He drinks again, his throat working, looking ragged and dangerous and perversely attractive. It makes Bodhi want to bite his throat where it’s bared, and not to stop there. That’s inconvenient to want, under the circumstances. Jyn obviously wants Cassian, Cassian will probably want Jyn when Cassian is in any shape to want anything, and at the same time Jyn is the one who Bodhi has been sleeping with, if in a reasonably innocent sense so far. 

Whether any of them are going to have sex in the immediate future is not, in any way, the most important thing to worry about, and yet it may be the most bearable one. “What kind of vices are we talking about?”

“I have a lot,” Cassian says. He looks at least a little amused.

“I have at least one.”

That gets Cassian to smile, although it’s a knife-edged expression. “And you seemed so well-behaved.”

Bodhi shrugs and holds out his hand for the bottle. Cassian releases it reluctantly, and reclaims it as soon as Bodhi has had a chance to drink. “I’m also attracted to women, so I didn’t think it would preclude a bright future in the Navy.” It’s hard to remember being the person who believed he could have one. It’s on the other side of too many things, meeting Galen and having his mind taken apart and watching planets explode.

Cassian shrugs one shoulder and drinks again. He’s working his way through the bottle with determination. “If someone told me I wasn’t allowed to suck cock, it probably would pose an obstacle to the bright future that clearly I would otherwise have.” 

“I take it the Alliance doesn’t …”

“The Alliance doesn’t care what you do on your own time,” Cassian says. “And you do what they need you to, on theirs.” 

“I don’t think I’d do that for the cause,” Bodhi says after a moment.

“Well, you would make a terrible intelligence agent, no offense—“

“No, no, none taken.”

“—so no one’s asking you to.” Cassian takes another drink and makes a face as if he is just now realizing how bad the stuff tastes. “Why are we talking about this?”

“I was coming onto you, but I think we took a wrong turn,” Bodhi says.

“I should not have drunk this much,” Cassian says, his forehead furrowing, and at that point Jyn reappears.

“Did you two drink all of that? Give me some.” Cassian hands her the bottle, and she drinks, not seeming put off by the taste. “Are you ready to go? I think we’ve had a party.”

“Yes, please,” Bodhi says, at the same time that Cassian says, “No, I am clearly having a good time, can’t you tell?”

“He’s in a bad mood,” Bodhi says.

“In a bad mood?” Cassian says, and Bodhi thinks that he is very close to exploding at both of them in a way that might actually help, but should not happen here in front of all these people who just want to be happy that they aren’t dead.

“Get up, we’re going,” Jyn says.

“You are not in charge,” Cassian says. “Tell her she isn’t in charge.”

“She’s right, though,” Bodhi says, and offers Cassian a hand up. Cassian slaps it out of the way, hauls himself up on his crutches, and tries to pick up the bottle, too. Bodhi takes the bottle before Cassian overbalances and winds up on the floor, and Jyn prods Cassian toward the exit.

“Give me the bottle, and we’ll say good night,” Cassian says when they’re out in the corridor. Bodhi considers the amount left in the bottle and the chances of Cassian winding up in the medical bay if he chases it with painkillers. He holds the bottle out of Cassian’s reach, which makes Cassian’s expression even stormier.

“You didn’t have to come,” Jyn says.

Cassian smiles without humor. “I didn’t know it was going to be such a terrible party.”

Jyn is up in Cassian’s face, now, her chin raised belligerently. It’s clear that she’s been drinking, too. “It’s not a terrible party. People are celebrating because we did something that mattered.”

“That won’t bring your father back.”

“Galen was willing to die to make this right,” Bodhi says, because Jyn isn’t the only one who Cassian is lashing out at right now, and he ought to know it.

Cassian turns on him. “Was he fucking you, is that why—“

Jyn hits Cassian across the face before he can finish, and Cassian lunges at her, letting the crutches fall in his attempt to grapple her against the wall. Jyn fends him off, holds him up for a moment where it’s obvious that he’s lost his balance, and then very deliberately lets him go.

Cassian slams down hard to his knees, and yells when he hits the floor, a wordless noise of rage and pain. 

Jyn meets his eyes, unflinching. “We all agreed we were willing to die for this.” 

“It turns out getting all my friends killed for this is actually less fun.”

“I’m sorry about K-2,” Bodhi says. It’s possible that it’s not a very kind thing to say, because it makes Cassian double over his knees like he’s knocked the wind out of him, but he isn’t sure that pretending terrible things haven’t happened will help.

“That wasn’t fair,” Cassian says eventually.

“You weren’t being fair,” Jyn says.

“I’m not … in a good place right now.”

“This is completely new information, we’re both shocked,” Bodhi says.

Cassian lifts his head. “You really aren’t very nice, are you?”

“Only by comparison to you two,” Bodhi says. “You’re both awful.”

“He’s worse than I am,” Jyn says.

“I am, I really am,” Cassian says. He smiles, and if it’s not a happy expression, at least it’s not one Bodhi thinks is intended to wound. “I’m not actually sure I can stand up.”

Bodhi goes down on one knee beside him and gets his shoulder under Cassian’s arm and hauls him to his feet. Jyn retrieves Cassian’s crutches, but Cassian doesn’t seem to want to let go, and Bodhi can take his weight well enough. 

Once they get back to their quarters, all three of them go down in a heap on the floor. They pass the bottle around until it’s empty, and then Jyn produces a flask.

Cassian focuses on it with an effort. “Does that belong to you?”

“I’ll give it back,” she says. They finish that, too, by which point the room is spinning. Bodhi doesn’t like that, and hangs onto Cassian’s shirt in a death grip.

“I am terrible for everyone,” Cassian says. “You shouldn’t trust me.”

“We know,” Jyn says, and curls around Cassian from behind, her face pressed against his neck.

In the morning, Bodhi is sick and Cassian isn’t, which doesn’t seem fair. 

“It takes more than that to get me hung over,” Cassian says, looking sympathetically amused. He’s up on his feet and leaning against the wall while Jyn rolls up her bedroll and Bodhi tries to breathe through waves of nausea that make him wish he had chosen to stop drinking at basically any point.

“That’s not actually a virtue,” Jyn says. She claims she isn’t hung over either, but Bodhi doesn’t believe her. “I am going to go shower and try to become human. Then I have hanger duty.” She is putting up reasonably patiently with being put to simple tasks because no one trusts her with field work, given that so far her major achievement for the Alliance was an act of staggering insubordination.

She grabs her clean clothes, and then leans in quickly to kiss Cassian on the cheek before she slips out the door. Cassian watches her go, and then touches his cheek without seeming to realize what he’s doing.

“Do you think the medical bay has hangover remedies?” Bodhi asks, dragging himself to his feet.

“Yes, but after last night, you’ll have to stand in line.” Cassian comes up behind Bodhi while Bodhi is opening the door, and then leans on one crutch to smooth Bodhi’s shirt between his shoulder blades and lightly tug at his hair, a quick awkward touch as if he’s trying to remember the language of affection.

It’s not an apology, but Bodhi doesn’t actually feel that he needs one.

*****

It’s clear in the next few days that they’ll have to evacuate the Yavin base. Bodhi gets assigned to pilot a transport, a small and battered ship that began life as a light freighter. He suspects Jyn of pulling strings to get herself and Cassian assigned as his crew for the most basic of missions, carrying themselves and crates of equipment from the old base to the new one with a stop along the way to pick up additional supplies.

Cassian is clearly the kind of pilot who makes a bad copilot. Bodhi can see his fingers itch to take the controls as they launch, but he does his half of the job without complaint, checking their course and preparing the ship for hyperspace. He’s off the crutches now, and walking without a cane, although Bodhi suspects that’s only out of sheer stubbornness.

They make it to their stopover and arrive in the middle of local night, with no one available to bring them their cargo until morning. Jyn and Cassian both pace the passenger compartment and seem frustrated by the delay, a reaction that Bodhi finds inexplicable.

“You realize this means we have the evening off?” he says.

“There might be a bar,” Jyn says speculatively.

“There might be a bar,” Cassian agrees, looking happier.

“Or we could take our clothes off,” Bodhi says, because he’s not in the mood to watch them get drunk again.

Cassian looks momentarily at a loss for words. “Did they not have, I don’t know, more subtle lines than that, in your part of the Navy?”

Bodhi shakes his head, because they didn’t, really.

“We have to try this eventually,” Jyn says, stripping her shirt off and her bra along with it. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

“It could go terribly,” Cassian says. “I’m not saying I don’t want to.” He is looking at her breasts as if he’s definitely interested.

Bodhi thinks that it would be easy for someone to get hurt. Cassian seems to think that being angry at physical limitations will make them go away. Bodhi doesn’t know exactly what emotional scars Jyn and Cassian have when it comes to sex, but he’s certain that they have plenty. His own experiences with sex have been largely enjoyable, but he’s still being knocked off-balance at the worst moments by horrible memories. It’s entirely possible that this could all go terribly.

He’s just not sure that any of them are going to get better anytime soon, and he doesn’t want to lose their chance of having this. There’s never any guarantee of some future better time.

“So what do you want to do?” he asks.

The pilot’s cabin has a bunk that’s not big enough for three, but it’s big enough for Cassian and Jyn to sit on the edge of it, kissing hungrily, Cassian’s hands on her breasts and her nails raking down Cassian’s back. Bodhi watches them make out like that for a while, kissing like they’re never going to get tired of it.

Eventually he goes down on his knees because that’s a thing he can do without interrupting them, running his hands up Cassian’s thighs, and Cassian leans his head back in satisfaction. Jyn kisses Cassian’s neck, and then bites it hard enough to leave a red mark, and Cassian’s breath catches. 

Bodhi unfastens Cassian’s trousers and works them off of him, leaving Cassian in only his open shirt, his hard cock standing up against his lean belly, the red marks of half-healed scars still sharp against his skin. It’s only at that point that he realizes, with sickening abruptness, that he isn’t going to be able to do this, can’t have something pressing into his mouth, _sliding_ , which he didn’t actually think about because that wasn’t sex, and this is sex, but he still can’t, he already can’t breathe—

“Hey,” Cassian says, tipping his chin up, holding it firmly. “Where did you go?” Bodhi shakes his head, all the answer he has. “That won’t work, get up.”

It turns out that it’s possible to share the bunk if he lies with his back to the bulkhead with Cassian stretched out next to him. Jyn tugs her trousers down until she can straddle Cassian’s lap and slide down onto his erection, careful to support her own weight. Cassian closes his eyes, and Bodhi files away that expression as appreciation, not pain. 

He can’t keep his own hands from wandering, and he lets himself explore Cassian’s hip and the plane of his stomach and Jyn’s warm thigh. He reaches up to touch her where the two of them are joined, and she bites down on her lip and then nods when he hesitates. He takes that as encouragement, and works her while she moves on Cassian until she comes, shuddering and obviously trying not to pound down hard with her hips, her nipples and her face flushed.

Eventually Cassian’s expression changes to a smile that isn’t entirely happy. “I don’t know if I can, without being able to move more than this.”

“I’m not good at being on the bottom,” Jyn says.

“So many logistical difficulties. Clearly we should give up,” Cassian says.

Jyn looks amused. “Really?” 

“No, I’ll die. What can we do?”

“You could, with me,” Bodhi says. He can feel Cassian’s attention focus on him all at once, like he’s in laser sights. “Some kind of lube would be appreciated, but … not necessary.”

“I am always prepared,” Cassian says. “Check my kit.”

It turns out to contain something that will work. Bodhi gets out of the rest of his clothes while Jyn and Cassian go back to making out. From her quickening breathing, Cassian has gotten distracted by the prospect of bringing her to another orgasm, his hand working between her thighs. Bodhi puts his arms around Jyn from behind while Cassian works on that, and Jyn grips his hand harder and harder while she strains against him and then finally relaxes.

“Now could we …?” Bodhi prompts.

“Right, sorry,” Jyn says, not sounding a bit sorry.

“Now I don’t know how long I’ll last,” Cassian says, sounding amused at himself.

Bodhi rolls over and braces himself against the head of the bed. “Let’s work on the assumption that it’s possible to find a happy medium.”

Cassian shakes his head. “How are you an optimist?” 

“Only by comparison.”

Cassian kneels behind him and then stretches forward to take hold of Bodhi’s wrists, probably not incidentally making Bodhi shoulder a considerable amount of Cassian’s weight. It takes a moment to relax into being pinned that way, but then it’s good. Jyn’s hand is warm on his hip. 

“Fast is better than slow,” he says, and Cassian takes him at his word and enters him in one hungry thrust, drawing back and then doing it again, and then again, hard pressure that concentrates Bodhi's world to Cassian’s hands on his wrists and his building orgasm. He’s not sure he wants to come with his cock untouched, and he’s not sure he’s going to be able to stop himself. Words are once again a problem.

“Your hand?” he manages, and thankfully that’s all Jyn needs to wrap her fingers around him so he can thrust into her tight grip. Everything about this feels good, he feels entirely here, and he lets himself stop thinking, stop trying to hold anything back, and Cassian drives into him even harder, with a sound that might be either pain or pleasure, and the orgasm breaks over him like a wave as he spills himself into Jyn’s fist.

Cassian keeps going, hard desperate thrusts, and this is a thing Bodhi can take for him, his weight while he’s straining for it, his desperation to wrench pleasure from pain. Finally Cassian arches against him and then sags. After a moment Bodhi has to wrestle Cassian off of him to avoid being crushed under his full weight.

Cassian is breathing hard, his hair plastered to his forehead by sweat. “Too much?” he asks.

Bodhi smooths Cassian’s hair back, and for once Cassian doesn’t bridle at someone being gentle with him. “You’re the one who won’t be able to move tomorrow.” 

“I’ll be fine,” Cassian says, and Bodhi doesn’t think that’s true, but he also thinks that they all get to decide what they’re willing to spend for what they want. 

Bodhi sits up on the edge of the bed, stretching his cramped shoulders. Jyn lies down beside Cassian, and Bodhi pulls a blanket over the two of them. “I want a shower,” he says when Jyn frowns. The three of them can’t share the bunk, and he wants this for them, right now, this moment where Cassian has his eyes closed, breathing evenly like he actually isn’t braced to fight, and Jyn has tucked her head against Cassian’s shoulder.

By the time Bodhi comes back, they’re both asleep. He gets a bedroll from the crew cabin and brings it back and stretches out on the deck. It’s easier to fall asleep on shipboard than it is on base, even when they’re not in hyperspace. He wakes up when Jyn climbs down next to him.

“The bunk is too small to sleep,” she says. He shifts over to make room for her to share the pillow. “What are we doing?” she asks after a while, her voice soft in the quiet.

“Doing this while we can,” he says. 

A lot of things will happen when they get to the new base. Cassian will get sent back into the field, or else he won’t, and both of those are problems, in different ways. Jyn will get assigned to do something that involves being shot at on a regular basis. Bodhi will stay on transports, or transfer to a bomber wing, and either way there are a thousand deaths waiting for him, a thousand ways that this ends in sudden light and sudden silence. 

It’s possible that Cassian and Jyn will decide they only want each other. It’s possible that Cassian and Jyn will decide they hate each other. It’s possible that there are worse minefields that they haven’t hit yet in bed, ways to hurt one another they haven’t found yet. He can’t make decisions about all those futures. Right now he’s barely managing right now.

“All right,” she says, and puts her arm around him. He can hear Cassian’s breathing, steady and even in his sleep. They aren’t on their way to whatever’s next, not yet; tonight, all the stars outside are standing still.


End file.
